210 THE COMMON COLICS OF THE HORSE 



we may safely take the advice of a cynic, whose name I 

 do not remember, and ' refrain from pouring medicines 

 of which we know little into a body of which we know 

 less.' 



Rather should the attention of those among us who 

 have a natural liking for investigation be strenuously 

 devoted to searching for a well-defined and certain cause. 

 We may then be better directed towards devising a suit- 

 able treatment. All this indicates most strongly that 

 the practitioner of veterinary medicine should be quite 

 certain of his diagnosis before he commences the merciful 

 administration of anodynes. 



In spite of the most careful reasoning, and in spite of 

 the most painstaking examination and observation, cases 

 of colic occasionally crop up in which the symptoms are, 

 for a time, dangerously alarming. Enteritis immediately 

 suggests itself to the practitioner's mind, and he com- 

 mences the exhibition of sedatives. Before he does that, 

 I would earnestly advise him to wait until his somewhat 

 tentative opinion has become an absolute conviction. If he 

 has not the courage to commence a stimulative treatment 

 at the outset, at any rate let him adopt harmless 

 expectant measures. Should the case turn out to be 

 enteritis, he may confidently assure himself that anything 

 he might have done would have been useless. 



On the other hand, should the alarming symptoms 

 begin to abate, and the matter resolve itself into some 

 more simple form of colic, he will then have the 

 advantage of being able to push stimulative measures on 

 a system that has not been previously placed outside the 

 pale of hope by the undue administration of sedatives. 

 He will find the average of his cases of so-called enteritis 

 considerably diminish in the course of a twelvemonth's 

 reckoning, and, greater boon still, he will find his powers 



